For decades, the literatures on firm capabilities and organizational economics have been at odds with each other, specifically relative to explaining organizational boundaries and heterogeneity. We briefly trace the history of the relationship between the capabilities literature and organizational economics and point to the dominance of a “capabilities first” logic in this relationship. We argue that capabilities considerations are inherently intertwined with questions about organizational boundaries and internal organization, and use this point to respond to the prevalent “capabilities first” logic. We offer an integrative research agenda that focuses, first, on the governance of capabilities and, second, on the capability of governance.

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This chapter reviews and discusses rational-choice approaches to organizational governance. These approaches are found primarily in organizational economics (virtually no rational-choice organizational sociology exists), particularly in transaction cost economics, principal-agent theory, and the incomplete-contracts or property-rights approach. We distill the main unifying characteristics of these streams, survey each stream, and offer some critical commentary and suggestions for moving forward.

This empirical study addresses the question of how foreign market unfamiliarity of entrant firms develops post-entry. Three different predictions of post-entry change of foreign market unfamiliarity are derived from the literature on firms’ internationalization process. The predictions are made subject to empirical examination using a set of primary data of current (i.e. at the point in time of mail interviews) foreign operation business operations reported by managers of Danish international firms. The empirical study gives insight to the incidence and character of the so-called ‘shock effect’ in relation to foreign market entry: the phenomenon of entrant firms’ inclination to underestimate differences between the home and host country in terms of the business environment. The data support the supposition that entrant firms in general are exposed to a ‘shock effect’. On average, the foreign market unfamiliarity as perceived by the entrant firms peaks seven years after entry. The company data indicate that entrant firms in general experience the shock effect in relation to entry of adjacent, rather than distant, countries. Hence, the ‘psychic distance paradox’ hypothesis is supported. Also, the data suggest that the shock effect befalls producers of customized products, but not producers of standardized products, and furthermore, entrant firms in general experience the shock effect in relation to acquisition of tacit rather than explicit knowledge. Key words: Internationalization process of firms, liability of foreignness, learning, shock effect.

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Organizational routines and capabilities have become key constructs not only in evolutionary
economics, but more recently also in business administration, specifically strategic management.
In this chapter we explicate some of the underlying theoretical problems of these concepts, and
discuss the need for micro-foundations. Specifically, we focus on some of the explanatory
problems of collective-level theorizing, and what we think are tenuous assumptions about human
beings. We argue that individual-level considerations deserve significantly more consideration,
and that evolutionary economics and strategic management would be well served by building on
methodological individualism.

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Organizations perform evaluations in order to demonstrate their trustworthiness to the
outside world and to produce knowledge for use by the management of the organization.
In the planning and application of specific evaluations in the organization, different
participants or stakeholders very often disclose different, hidden or conflicting agendas.
In recent years, the use of evaluations in organizations has grown rapidly and we have
witnessed the rise of a new bureaucratic instrument in the realm of knowledge
production in organizations, viz., internal evaluations. Such evaluations produce a set of
data as part of the evaluation process and the long-term impact of this new systematically
organised set of data on organizational activities are normally not taken seriously into
consideration when the use of evaluations in organizations are discussed. Said
differently, evaluations have become a major factor in the management of organizations,
but the academic literature on internal evaluation very rarely discusses the impact of this
instrument on the long term behaviour and activity of members of the organization. This
lacuna in the literature persists despite the well known fact, established by numerous
studies of organizational sociology, that people tend to adapt to external behavioural
demands especially when related to power relations in the organization.
keywords: research evaluation, governance, social control, publication counts.

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Just like scholars distinguish two types of firm’s external environment, i.e., competitive and institutional, we make a distinction between two types of firm’s internal environment, i.e., resources and organization. Based on this distinction, we propose an organization-based view of strategy (OBV), not only as a label to unite various organization-related issues within the strategy field, but also as a fourth research paradigm to supplement to three existing paradigms, i.e., industry- or competition-based view (CBV), resource-based view (RBV), and institution-based view (IBV). Bringing the four paradigms together, we transform Mike Peng’s ‘strategy tripod’ into a ‘strategy quadrapod’. By proposing an organization-resource-institution-competition (ORIC) analysis and a situation-action-performance (SAP) framework, we attempt to make a grand integration of the strategy field.

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In this paper the two canonical theories of the firm - transaction costs economics and the
knowledge-based view of the firm – predictions on ‘make-or-buy’ are tested on the news
industry. The news industry provides an interesting case on which to test the two theories since
it is characterized by a high degree of urgency. Urgency refers to the need to catch and process
inputs fast. A tendency that is becoming more widespread in other industries where the
production cycle tends to be reduced. The test is don on original data on the newspaper industry
collected by the author. The conclusions drawn are that that newspapers are organized differently
than is predicted from the knowledge-based view of the firm and transaction cost economics.
The newspapers do no specialize in core competencies measured in terms of topics covered. On
the contrary, a precondition for outsourcing is well-developed competencies in house. The
widespread use of integration cannot either be explained as a solution to hold up either, such as
transaction cost economics predicts. The reason behind has to be sought in urgency.

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Austrian economics focuses on markets, but has much to say about organizations. In
particular, Austrian insights on the structure of production, the heterogeneity and
subjectivity of resources, the nature of uncertainty, the role of monetary calculation,
and the function of the entrepreneur provide solid foundations for a distinctly
Austrian theory of organizations. We review these insights, discuss recent literature
on Austrian economics and the theory of the firm, and suggest new directions for
developing and extending an Austrian approach to organizations.

The well-being of employees is currently a central matter of concern both in public and private
companies. If employees do not feel well, in the last instance they might experience a burn out or
fall ill from stress and thus add to the highly costly yet ever growing number filling up the statistics
of this modern epidemic. In short, well-being is key to productivity. For sure this is not a new story,
but at the core of organization and management theory: how to best organize the human resources
of production balancing off the need for increased productivity and the preservation of physical and
mental resources of the worker? In contrast to classic principles such as Taylor’s scientific management,
it seems today generally agreed that well-being thrives when work is organized by principles of
‘flexibility’, ‘learning’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘creativity’. However, at the same time workplaces and
organizations are under an enormous pressure towards standardization and optimization. This
dissertation investigates empirically competing or intersecting ways of organizing well-being and
productivity, with an analytic outset in the work task, departing from historically generated, however still
prevalent, dichotomies and normativities of standardization and flexibility respectively.
The empirical case of the dissertation is the organization of postal work in a big and formerly
publicly run distribution company in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic field work and the
employment of an auto-photographic method, the dissertation investigates how the current and
simultaneous efforts of standardization and flexibility configure the well-being(s) and productivities
of postal work. The theoretical framework is primarily informed by Actor Network Theory and
the dissertation attend to a detailed investigation of how well-being and productivity are enacted
in the daily work practices and the constant shifting/delegation going on between the inscribed
postal worker of work tools, standard procedures and management programs on the one side and
the routinized bodies of the postal workers on the other. Most of the time this results in ‘working
compatibilities’ silently enacting bodies-with-standards that are both productive and well. At other
times, however, controversy and conflicts arise, pointing to the fact that the presence of multiple
modes of organizing are not always productive.
The empirical chapters departs from selected auto-photographs that prompt different
unfoldings of the way postal work is organized – or sought organized – and the way well-being
and productivity arise as effects of these organizations. In this unfolding the analysis proceed on
a tension between phenomenological and actor-network theoretical readings of empirical material
creating a patchwork-like assemblage of postal work. This involves a stitching together of highly
mundane, corporeal practices and material such as bicycles and kickstands, personal experiences, the
researcher’s interpretations, the technical scripts of electric bikes, the norms of postal workers, the
discourse of management and the political-economic developments of European postal markets.
Through the empirical chapters, the dissertation depicts postal work not as a story of standardization
versus flexibility, but as a constant ‘juggling’ and balancing act between them. This is not a story of
humanization or the opposite, it is both at once. It is not a story of stabilization or perpetual change,
it is both at once. It is a story of the hanging-togetherness of an organization that displays multiple
versions of well-being and productivity as well as multiple controversies as a result of this. Depending
on the stakes one has in this complex organizational set-up, whether one is the postal worker, the local
manager, the HR consultant or perhaps the customer, preferences will differ, and indeed this is an
important discussion. What is the better way to organize postal work? The analysis presented in the
dissertation will not deliver the answer to this, but hopefully make the discussion a more qualified one,
by displacing old truths. Having as point of departure and final emphasis a heuristics of the work task,
the thesis aims to contribute to a specification of organization theory, HRM and work environment
theorizing, which otherwise tend to have lost its primary object: work.

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An Exploratory Discussion of Austrian Economics, Property Rights, and the Firm

Foss, Kirsten; Foss, Nicolai J.(København, 2001)

[Flere oplysninger]

[Færre oplysninger]

Resume:

Many economists, notably Austrian economists, have argued that the market process is essentially an experimental process. We briefly try to clarify this conceptualization, and then argue that we may understand the firm in much the same light. A basic view of the firm as an experimental entity is derived, drawing on property rights insights.
JEL Code: D21, D23, D83

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Many economists, including Austrian economists, have argued that the market
process is essentially an experimental process. We briefly try to clarify this
conceptualization, and then argue that we may understand the firm in much the
same light. A basic view of the firm as an experimental entity is derived, drawing
on property rights insights.

Technological knowledge is often claimed to be context-bound and sticking to local
surroundings. This paper investigates how technological knowledge can be exchanged in
international subcontractor relationships, using relationship-oriented organizational practices.
Five hypotheses concerning such practices are tested. It is shown that the use of relationshiporiented
practices varies with exports and the active development of subcontractors in product
and process development activities. Moreover, international development-oriented subcontractors
are more likely to use interpersonal exchange, electronic data interchange and formalized
contracts than other types of subcontractors. Research implications as well as managerial
implications are derived.

This paper invites to discuss the processes of individualization and organizing being carried out under what we might see as an emerging regime of change. The underlying argumentation is that in certain processes of change, competence becomes questionable at all times. The hazy characteristics of this regime of change are pursued through a discussion of competencies as opposed to qualifications illustrated by distinct cases from the Danish public sector in the search for repetitive mechanisms. The cases are put into a general perspective by drawing upon experiences from similar change processes in MNCs. The paper concludes by asking whether we can escape from a regime of competence in a world defined by a rhetoric of change and create a more promising world in which doubt and search serve as a strategy for gaining knowledge and professionalism that improve on our capability for mutualism.

Program QA at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) faces two major challenges; (1) large number of different programs, and (2) decentralized organisation of the program area. CBS has more than 60 programs in the portfolio, each managed by an autonomous Study Board. The paper demonstrates how CBS has addressed these challenges in a quality policy based on two main elements. Standards and Guidelines for day to day quality operations are combined with recurrent 5 year cycle peer reviews of every program. It is demonstrated how optimal use of existing information from various sources can be combined to provide a parsimonious picture of program performance, without putting too much burden on program managers. Both external and internal peer reviewers are used in order to create dialogue, mutual inspiration, increased alignment across programs, and balance between formative development and summative assessment. Early experiences with implementation of the QA system are discussed.

Within the last couple of decades, a range of new concepts that all propose that
science should be done ‘more responsibly’ has emerged within science
governance literature as well as in science government in both the USA and
across Europe. Terms such as ‘Responsible Innovation’ (Owen et al. 2013) and
‘socially robust science’ (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001) have gained
momentum within science governance. Generally speaking, the calls share the
view that there is a need for more external governing of science as a vital
supplement to the internal professional ethics that also guide scientific conduct
(Braun et al. 2010; Jasanoff 2011). Moreover, they agree that there is a need to
enhance scientists’ abilities to reflect upon the ‘outcomes’ of their inventions –
that is, the social, environmental and ethical consequences of introducing new
scientific knowledge and technologies into society. Though the calls for
‘Responsible Science’ are plentiful, few have actually studied how ‘Responsible
Science’ is done in practice and how the demands affect the scientific work, i.e.
the organisation of science, the scientists’ professional identities and their wellbeing
at work. This dissertation examines how public scientists relate to current
demands for ‘Responsible Science’. Based on a Foucauldian-inspired document
study of scientific journal papers as well as an STS-inspired ethnographic study
of two laboratories, it answers the research questions:
How is ‘Responsible Science’ conducted and justified by public scientists – and
what are the consequences of these responsibilities in their daily work?